Tag: shampoo

You take a first look at it, and it might not look like much. Light brown in color, a bit dirty looking, with a stamp in arabic on the top that you might not understand. It might be quite unevenly cut and you might find it lying in a box with tons of others, without any packaging. You pick it up, and it smells of earth and hay. But then you might cut it open, and you will be greeted by a beautiful deep emerald color. And then you might use it, and your will fall in love.

The product I’m talking about is one of the oldest cosmetic products there is. The traditions of Aleppo soap making is over a thousand years old, and is by some considered to be the first hand soap ever made.

With the Easter holidays soon over, I bet you have more than a couple of extra eggs lying around in your fridge, just waiting to be used. What better way to use then than to use them in your skin care regime? Eggs will strengthen and rejuvenate hair as well as skin. Here’s a few of my favorite egg recipes!

Let’s face it – making your own skin care products is time consuming. And as I understand that everyone don’t get a kick out of it in the same way as I do, I don’t blame anyone who feel they don’t have time or energy to make everything from scratch. So why not cheat a bit?

Check out these three easy ways to turn your store bought, cheap plain products into fancy customized products in no time.

Out on summer cottages, the rules of skin care are something completely different. You simply don’t feel like there’s any point in taking care of your skin or hair. But when out on the country side, you’re often surrounded by herbs and flowers that are loaded with vitamins and antioxidants that would do wonders for your skin.

Before heading off to celebrate mid summer, I just wanted to share a couple of great recipes that need almost no ingredients. A birch shampoo and a herbal cleansing milk. These are wonderful when you’re out in the middle of nowhere and want a luxurious treatment that you picked yourself. You can find the recipes over at Hildablue recipes. And don’t forget, herbal infusions are amazing face toners.

Well, here we are then. My hair washing test has come to an end. Five months and no less than nine different methods later, I am now all the wiser. I hope.

Two weeks per method is not very much. For some methods, it will not have been enough to see the proper results. Also, most of the time I was the only test person, and so the results will be based on how my hair has reacted to the specific method (just ask my friend Ami. She will give you a whole different side of somestories).

But, bearing all this in mind, I hope I have provided you with some information about these hair washing methods and maybe given you some new ideas to try out. If nothing else, at least I can say I’ve had a whole lot of different stuff in my hair. And I have spent a whole lot of money.

Anyway, here’s my two cents. Read more about the methods by clicking the links to the original posts. (more…)

Well, here we are then. Time for my last review of a hair washing method. As some of you may know, the egg shampoo test was supposed to be the last one. But then I by chance saw this powder shampoo that was sold in an organic shop here (Ekolo in Hakaniemi, if you’re interested), and figured it could be worth a try.

Eliah Sahil’s Shampoo Natural is a mixture of mainly indian herbs that will wash and condition your hair. You can read more about the specific herbs on the link I mentioned. If you want to experiment with making your own mixtures of herbs, read through this guide on longhaircommunity. (more…)

This time, I have tried out using eggs as the active ingredient when washing my hair. Egg is supposed to genrly wash the hair, and add shine, make it fluffy and deeply nourish damaged hair. Back in the good ole days, egg was commonly used as shampoo in many countries, and here in Finland you can still find egg shampoo in the cheap stores (how much egg they contain I don’t know).

I have used a recipe that I found from oldenbuzz. It also contains quite a lot of olive oil, and also lemon juice and vinegar, so it should be a good mixture of most stuff that the hair needs.

A shampoo bar is exactly what it sounds like – shampoo in the form of a soap bar. I have added shampoo bars to my list of alternative hair washing methods, because it is generally milder to your hair than many other shampoos. The fact that the shampoo is a bar means that it doesn’t need to contain all the harsh ingredients that liquid shampoo would need to contain (like preservatives). It’s still a good idea to skim through the ingredient list before buying a shampoo bar – some of them (like Lush’s) contain Sodium Lauryl Sulfate which is drying and irritating for the scalp. Remember I’d be happy to look through an ingredient list for you if you need help 🙂(more…)

For this hair washing test, we have been doing something more traditional – trying out ecological shampoos and conditioners. But it has also been a kind of two-in-one test; at the same time I have been trying out a washing method called CWC (Condition-wash-condition), which basically means that one should apply conditioner to the hair before applying the shampoo, so as to spare the hair from the harsh ingredients found in shampoos.
But most ecological shampoos are very gentle on your hair, not containing any of the ingredients that should be avoided. We tried two pairs of eco shampoos and conditioners: Urtekram’s Aloe vera shampoo and Ole hyvä vanilla-apple-cinnamon shampoo + vanilla-chocolate conditioner. I chose these two because they are produced relatively close and they are also quite cheap compared to many other organic shampoos on the market. These two both use Sodium coco sulfate as their foaming agent, which is said to be gentler on the hair and skin than for sodium laureth sulfate (though they are both coconut derivatives – roughly said coco sulfate is just a much more diluted version of SLS). (more…)

I haven’t washed my hair with shampoo in over a year. And my hair has never felt better.

See, many shampoos are actually really damaging for hair and scalp. One of the reasons for this is Sodium Layrul sulfate, which I already mentioned when talking about toothpaste. SLS dries out your hair and scalp something terrible, but can still be found in almost all shampoos on the market.

Two other culprits might be silicones and proteins. They both cause build-up in the hair. But this varies greatly from person to person, some hair types love protein/silicones while to some they are a complete nightmare.(more…)